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Chapter 227: Chapter 27, Episode 2: For Whom The Bell Tolls

Is he still not dead, or did he die sitting?

Zaitun looked at his victim with blurry eyes. The human, who was unlike a human, didn’t move from his sitting position. Zaitun didn’t doubt his death. His limbs would have been paralyzed in 0.1 seconds, and he would have stopped breathing in 10 seconds.

Zaitun found his death unfortunate. He’d managed to inject the Peskett CCW by the sliver of a chance. It was the perfect timing, and he was in perfect condition. Like a shadow, he’d even been trained to manipulate his heartbeats using hypnosis and drugs.

He’d been plenty careful, but as expected, the guy was overwhelming. He’d attacked in his most peaceful state as though he was slapping his friend’s back, but he was still critically counterattacked. He wanted to check whether the target was dead, but the paralysis wasn’t wearing off. The b*stard was too scary anyway that he didn’t want to approach him.

Kaparja Valley had the best conditions for a guerrilla’s headquarters. Its surroundings were filled with rocks. It was a rocky mountain where grasses couldn’t grow due to its dry and non-nutritious, weak sand.

Thanks to its geographical factors, it was hard for enemies to raid, and it was also a good place for surveillance. Enemies had to walk five to six kilometers into the mountain to attack the training grounds. In the meantime, there was enough time to either set up a defense or flee.

Sufficient water flowed out between the rocks for 1,000 people’s drinking and daily purposes. There was a waterfall deep inside the valley. The hydroelectric generator, which the Syrian government had installed for them, supplied them with electricity. The fact that they could use electricity in the middle of Syria’s mountainous regions made Kaparja a blessed land.

The cliffs surrounding both sides of the valley created a canopy. They could avoid air surveillance, and it could withstand long-distance field artillery attacks.

There were several natural caves on the cliffs. The caves could also be used as an emergency hideout. They could also drill the rocks to create caves for living spaces.

Abu Nidal had accepted all of these blissful conditions. The problem was food. Not a single fruit tree could grow on the mountain. There wasn’t any land to farm on, either. It was a deserted place where they could only starve if the food supply discontinued.

Jamal, who was wearing a black headscarf, lowered his binoculars from the eastern watchpoint of Ruman and tapped his friend. The black headscarf indicated a leadership position within the five-member squad.

“Barjani, a person appeared and disappeared off the eastern hill.”

“Really?”

“I’m not sure since it happened so suddenly. It’s the Kindall B-zone where the captain of security had ordered concentrated surveillance on.”

“Didn’t you imagine it out of hunger?”

“Damn, I am hungry.”

Jamal gently rubbed his growling stomach. Their daily assigned meals had decreased from three to two until they were only given one today.

Until last month, Syria had spared no effort in supporting its military logistics. The supply trucks, which started from Aleppo, commuted all the way to their meeting point below the mountain. Supplies that were left around their meeting point were then transported by donkeys to their headquarters that were five kilometers away.

The number of supply trucks that had visited every other day began to decrease since the latter half of last month. If the trucks didn’t come tomorrow, they’d have to eat the donkeys that did nothing but played around.

In the past few months, the Mukhabarat, who supplied the ANO, was busy preparing a face-off against the Muslim Brotherhood. On top of that, Syria was in chaos due to Black Mamba’s mess. Aleppo’s Mukhabarat headquarters had no time to worry about the ANO’s dining tables. Jamal would have to starve.

“Jamal, shouldn’t we tell the captain?”

“Damn, I’ll be kicked out if I tell him something uncertain.”

Jamal wasn’t bothered. He was completely sick of fighting. He’d been enamored by the Pan-Arabism ideals during his studies at Aleppo University and had involved himself with the ANO. His pride dissolved within a year from working for the righteousness of God.

He had enough of the indiscriminate destruction and unreasonable murder. He was tired of life from being chased and tortured by mosquitoes and poisonous insects in the mountains. Now, all he could think of was to get back home.

“Jamal, what are you going to do?” Barjani asked.

Jamal wanted to hit his own mouth for saying something worthless. No, he wanted to throw the binoculars that the Syrian government had provided them.

He pushed the bullet in his left thigh back and forth. He’d grown a habit of pushing around any bullet embedded in his thigh when he was anxious.

He’d been shot while fleeing from blowing up a police officer’s house in Paris. The bullet was stuck on his thigh, but he couldn’t pull it out since he was too busy running. He had returned to the training center in 20 days.

Funnily enough, the wound had healed with the bullet still intact. The bullet, which had become a part of his body, didn’t give him much discomfort. The ANO’s directive office had called Jamal a warrior with Allah’s blessing. He even wore a leader’s mark due to the miraculous bullet.

There were individual reasons behind those who were involved with an organization. Barjani was a follower of Abu Nidal. No, he was someone who regarded Abu Nidal as God. Refusing his ideals were bound to have one reported as a traitor.

Becoming a traitor meant being locked in the punishment room. The punishment room, which was constructed from digging through the cliff, had barely enough space for two people to lie down. For days, people had to starve and fight against poisonous insects while they were inside.

“I’m not sure, let’s not wake the captain and just bring our group over.”

In conclusion, Jamal woke the five members of his unit and left Ruman. Jamal carefully climbed the eastern hill, which was called the Kindall-B zone. With that, it ended 30 years of Jamal’s life.

A Paranthropus’ body was incredible. In exchange for bleeding a bucket of his precious blood, his paralyzed muscles relaxed.

Father, teacher, you can’t trust anyone in this world.

Black Mamba blamed his father and teacher. His father had said that one had to be honest for others to be honest. His teacher had told him to find trustworthy attributes instead of suspecting others. They were all nonsense. He couldn’t trust anyone in this world. That was his newfound realization.

“Dang, my precious blood. God, how’s there such a strong poison?”

Black Mamba, who was now relaxed, wiped the cold sweat off his forehead. It hadn’t taken two seconds for Zaitun to stab his side with a strange object and for him to crush and slice off his hand.

Most poisons had an incubation period. Like all viruses and bacteria, tetrodotoxin took time to diffuse. Most poisons didn’t affect him. It would neutralize the moment it diffused. It was a side effect of the Excita virus that he had been contaminated with when he turned into a Paranthropus.

This time, the poison that he had been attacked with diffused without a chance to neutralize. It took five minutes for him to expel. If he hadn’t gained resonance, he would’ve hovered between life and death despite his deceptive anti-poison constitution.

“Kekeke, it’s surprising that he’s still resisting.”

Zaitun laughed with a face crumpled into the likes of a devil. He’d displayed an unimaginable amount of patience. He’d ripped the edges of his tobe with his teeth by moving his cracked neck bone. He’d stopped the bleeding of both of his hands with his mouth and feet.

The injuries on Zaitun were shocking. He had displayed astounding strength and mentality. Even Black Mamba was impressed by the fact that he’d wrapped both of his hands with his tobe.

Black Mamba, who’d been frozen the entire time, began to move. He shook his ringing head and grabbed the weapon on the ground. It was similar to the actions of a ratel that woke from a cobra’s paralysis.

“No way?” Zaitun gasped.

His eyes widened to the point of tearing. The dead b*stard was moving. If a corpse moved, it wouldn’t be a human but a zombie. He hadn’t stabbed deep enough, but he’d injected the guy with botulinum toxin. The botulinum toxin version F, which had no incubation period, was a product of the DIA’s medical information center in partnership with Johnson and Johnson.

Once injected into the body, it would destroy an organism’s nervous system’s synapses at a fearful rate. The entire body would be paralyzed instantly. An immobilized human would die within 10 seconds. Since the nerves were paralyzed instead of the muscles, the human resembled a toy without batteries.

The poison of the botulinum toxin was crude. It could kill an elephant in 30 seconds. It was the strongest poison in existence, which could kill 5,000,000,000 people with 100 grams. Botox, which women considered the symbol of youth, was a substance diluted to one/billionth of its potency from botulinum toxins type A and B.

A human who moved after it had been injected with the botulinum toxin? If it was a dream, it was a very bad one. If it was real life, that guy was a zombie and not a human.

Black Mamba glanced at Zaitun, whose mouth was open and turned to look at the weapon in his hand. He wasn’t interested in Zaitun, who couldn’t fight anymore. It was a specialized weapon for murder. He could smell blood by simply looking at it.

There was a round hammer attached to the back with the handle as its balance, and an attached blade with teeth on its right and left. There was a stranded gold thread by the uppermost handle where the clasp was. Underneath the handle were two buttons. Its entire length was around 25 centimeters. He recalled seeing an image of the weapons during his training in the Deuxieme Rep.

“A Peskett CCW?”

He remembered. It was a multi-purpose murder weapon that the SOE[1] had designed during WWII and given to agents. It’d been developed by Charles Smith of the SOE equipment research department.

SOE had called the collection of agent-based weapons like the Peskett CCW and Merican SAK, the Q Kit. The character “Q” of the movie 007 was based on the developer, Charles Smith.

That was the first time he saw the weapon in person. The weapon in his hand was much more refined and elegant compared to the Peskett CCW.

“How vicious. That hammer would be for bashing a person’s skull, the gold thread for strangling, and the teeth for stabbing one into critical injury. The square button to inject poison, and the round button for the teeth’s compartment and projection. What’s the small hook at its tip for?”

Black Mamba levelled the teeth towards Zaitun.

“Hm!” Zaitun let out a gust of breath in surprise.

“Ah-hah, it’s the button for launching the poisoned teeth.”

As if to tease, Black Mamba turned the weapons around and pressed the round button. The tooth, which was as long as his finger, flicked into the handle without a sound.

“Zaitun, you have astounding endurance to swallow your screams while your hands were being crushed, and your wrists were being cut off. It should take at least the DIA, KGB, or Mossad to create a person like you. Don’t even bother bringing up the CIA. They’re good at strategies and public works, but they don’t have traditional and specialized spies like you.”

Black Mamba twirled the weapon around as he walked back and forth. He was relaxing his stiffened muscles.

“What…what the hell are you? How are you not dead? Are you even human? I heard those frogs did some weird human experiments, is that you?” Zaitun kept asking instead of answering his question.

Woosh—

The Gorgon stretched all the way. Black Mamba had learned the cycloid technique, which created the fastest acceleration speed. The five-pointed spear at the end of his whip crossed the space between them, at once.

“Kugh!”

Zaitun’s right toe was crushed.

“Zaitun, I’ll be sad if you don’t realize the situation you’re in. Didn’t I tell you that I have a bad habit of tearing people’s limbs apart when I’m sad? I ask, you answer. If you answer to the best of your abilities, I’ll kill you clean and give you a burial.”

Zaitun felt his sight darkened. A needle wouldn’t go through the guy. That b*stard could do more than tear his body apart, like pulling at a beetle’s legs or ripping off a dragonfly’s wings. Going against that monster wouldn’t allow him a single chance of survival. His 35 years of life was over now.

Zaitun was a follower of Islam. He didn’t fear death, but with a ruined body, his soul had no place to return to. He didn’t want to wander in jahannam[2], leaving aside a brighter world.

“I swear on the Day of Resurrection, I swear on the accusing soul that God shall gather the humans’ bones.”

Zaitun continued and recited a verse from the Quran, “On a day when their tongues, hands, and feet will bear witness against them as to what they used to do. That day, Allah will pay them in full their deserved recompense, and they will know that it is Allah who is the (very) truth, that makes all things manifest.”

His mind settled.

“Very well. My chances of survival are as low as the possibility of your revival from the botulinum toxin. If it’s not my organization’s secret, I will answer honestly. Just kill me neatly.”

“What a man. Names are meaningless anyway. Your affiliation?”

“The DIA[3], shadow number three of the Middle East’s headquarters.”

“DIA shadow?”

Black Mamba nodded. Zaitun being a DIA shadow agent, explained his strong physique and mentality.

“Hold on!” Black Mamba lowered his voice.

His senses had dulled from the poison. The enemy had already approached his 250 meters mark. He pulled out an MP5SD3 from his backpack. The short MP5 could easily fit into his backpack without any disassembling.

“Zaitun, your efforts weren’t in vain. A guest has come. Wait a moment, won’t you?”

Rustle—

Black Mamba blended into the forest like a leaf fluttering in the wind.

“Hum, corpses will pile,” Zaitun sighed.

He didn’t know whether the guy was human or not, but one would have to hit the guy with mortars to kill him. The traditional-styled terrorists, who carried around a Kalashnikov, were as good as dead.

Black Mamba attached himself to a large sandstone rock like a lizard and looked down.

One, two, three…six in total. Why are there so few of them?

Three teams of two were all there was. There wasn’t anyone else he could sense with his dimensional field perception skill, either.

“Should I test out the beauty, then?”

Black Mamba flinched amid his mumbling. If his teacher found out that he considered humans as mere targets for gun practice, he’d have hit his head until the wooden table cracked.

Whoo, seems like all the effort that I put into the prayer services at the temple is reverting, Amita Bul. He automatically lamented.

For now, he had to get rid of those b*stards and crash their headquarters.

The distance was 180 meters, which was quite far for an MP5, but he didn’t care. A human skull wasn’t a bulletproof vest. It was a distance good enough for a parabellum bullet to enter their heads and flip around their brains.

Pa-pat pa-pat pa-pat—

It was a three-hit double-tap. Five of them, who had been climbing the hill in a fanned out position, died almost simultaneously.

“Ya illahi hakan hada![4]” Jamal freaked out.

Five of his friends, who’d been climbing the hill with him, were shot at the same time. Jamal’s brain failed to comprehend the situation. He unknowingly raised both of his hands in the air.

“Save me! Allah, please consider this sinner.”

“What a long life he has, or should I say good odds of survival?”

Pat—

An object that was similar to a hammer hit the back of his head. Jamal’s consciousness faded into darkness.

[1] British’s Special Operations Executive.

[2] Hell in Islam.

[3] Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States.

[4] Ah! What in the world!